Belonging….

There are few places that you've been where you feel like you really belong. These places leave a lasting impression on your minds and in their own subtle way unravel fragments of your personality to you. They may be your old school, or a park where you've played a lot, a garden, a lake or even a beach. When you are there you are able to tune out all the noise of the world outside and be completely aware of your own being, like an island of calm floating amidst a sea of chaos. You are drawn to return to them again and again as though a hidden force is tugging at you to return. It’s as if the invisible threads of fate intertwine you to that place forming an unseen but unbreakable bond. The wall that you've built within comes tumbling down, and inhibitions and insecurities are cast aside when you are there. Regrets about the past and worries about the future don’t seem to matter and all you can think of is the present, living life one breath at a time.

These places have a life of their own too and it’s not always that you have the connection. They seem to have their own persona, just like people do. Sometimes if it’s too crowded, or too noisy, or too hot or just for no reason you could feel like a total stranger to the place, an outsider. And this makes it worse, but hey, maybe the place isn't in the right mood, or maybe you just aren't. But if by chance you do get the feeling that today you belong there, what follows is magical. You can’t predict what then goes through your mind and in what new direction your stream of thoughts would lead you. You begin to explore sides of yourself that you've never seen before, and rediscover parts of yourself that you thought were lost or long forgotten. Sometimes it’s like reading through pages of your diary that were left unwritten bringing up memories old and new. Happy memories, the one’s you would cherish all your life. A few sad ones too, that bring a deep longing for what might have been. And countless memories that leave you laughing hysterically, of silly mistakes that you've made and pranks you've played and those that were played on you.

For me, Calicut beach has been a place where I feel at home. Be it on lazy afternoons when few people bother to step out into the scorching sand, or overcast evenings when the sound of thunder echoes with the roar of the waves or late at night when the ocean is painted silver by a full moon. Whatever I may be doing, be it listening to my friends chat, or walking along the shoreline quietly aware of the waves lapping at my feet, or attempting to swim through the waves with a few adventurous friends (or at least that’s what we pretend we are doing), or simply staring at the unfathomable ocean, sometimes I feel a mystical connection. It’s as if some part of me is hidden away in the sands or buried in the sea and I can feel that part only when I’m here.

Another place which speaks to me is the grassy mountainside (I don’t know what else to call it) behind my school. As it was on top of a hill and far away from anything else, there was always a light breeze there. I used to sit there with one of my friends and we watched eagles take to the sky. Sometimes the eagles would glide effortlessly with the wind and sometimes they would struggle to rise above it. A few times there were so many eagles flying around that we called it a ‘quidditch’ match. And the view there was just spectacular. You could get a feel of the entire city of Calicut from there. The city’s tallest and most prominent buildings rising like islands of concrete through a green ocean of trees. As the eye drifts westward you could see the trees and buildings merge with the endless Arabian Sea at the edge of the horizon. If you were still enough, you could easily fall under the illusion of hearing the soothing ramblings of the sea though you were so far out from it.

Maybe it’s these place that bring these thoughts out of me, or maybe the thoughts were already there, hidden in the recesses of my minds, needing the right time to reveal themselves. Whichever be the case I feel grateful for these places and for these thoughts and for the people who've made these places special. And I’m sure that at least some of you have felt this way about places you've been, places that are so special that you just can’t forget them. Places which you would like to revisit, if only to revel in the solitude they offer and to reminisce old memories. And I hope that whichever road life takes us through, we find places along the way where we feel like we belong and people who make this journey worthwhile, and that they may always have a special place in our hearts.